1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the art of ruffling, pleating or gathering strip material.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There are a great many textile items that are ruffled, etc., sometimes for decorative purposes, other times to decrease the amount of material along a certain contour while leaving the major portion of the material unpleated so that it may drape attractively. Normally, ruffling is achieved by means of an oscillating tucking blade, which is adjustable to vary the size or amplitude of each ruffle. This tucking blade is generally mounted on the receiving side of the sewing machine's presser foot so that each individual tuck, taken or formed in that flat ruffling material entering the sewing machine, is in position to be sewn immediately following the completion of the individual tucking operation, which formed it.
Under proper operating conditions, ruffles of a desired size will be formed and sewn and a desired ratio, between a given length of rapidly moving strip stock material fed to the sewing machine and the correspondingly smaller length of "sewn ruffled material" (a.k.a. dust or bed ruffle) delivered more slowly from the machine, will be maintained. However, if the individual ruffles are smaller than desired, the designer's objective is not attained. If they are larger than desired, excess ruffling stock material is consumed, which is undesirable to one party or another because of the increased cost.
In some cases, a 1st party, who is equipped to do the ruffling, may be employed to do so at a given price by a 2nd party who supplies both materials under an agreement requiring a fixed amount of ruffling material to be consumed at a ratio of, say, 1.5 (i.e., 1.5 ruffling to 1.0 base). If the 2nd party specifies a 1.5 ratio and, at no cost to the ruffler, supplies 15,000 yards of material to be ruffled and 10,000 yards of base or platform material, the 1st party in ruffling the 15,000 yards of ruffle material and sewing it to the 10,000 yards of base or platform material, must maintain the specified ratio of 1.5. However, if he erroneously maintains a ratio of 1.7, he will sew all 15,000 yards of ruffling material to approximately 8,820 yards of base or platform material and, for the same erroneously high ratio, he will need 2,000 additional yards of ruffling material for the remaining 1180 yards of base platform material. Needless to say, the cost of this extra 2,000 yards must be borne by the ruffler at a corresponding loss to him.
In the prior patented art, the Sotzky U.S. Pat. No. 2,803,207 discloses an oscillating tucking blade which is adjustable to vary the size or amplitude of each ruffle; and the U.S. Sigoda U.S. Pat. No. 3,000,332 discloses a multiple ruffling machine which, in each of several ruffling lines, receives lace strips under varying tensions but operates to meter out precise lengths thereof to be ruffled. In other words, it keeps the metered amount for each ruffle at a constant value so as to maintain the same ratio in ruffling materials supplied under non-uniform tensions. Indicating means, enabling an erroneously high ratio to be quickly determined and corrected, is not disclosed in this prior art.